Eric Meyer on a Question of Degree
The biggest disservice we impart to emerging web professionals is the misguided belief that for the rest of their careers (perhaps as long as 30-50 years) they will never need a formal degree or qualification. In effect, we tell them the world will never change and the Internet is here forever in it’s current form.
Eric Meyer touched on the importance, or irrelevance, of having a degree to the contemporary web professional in a recent post titled A Question of Degree. The comments are well worth investigating for a run-down of reasons you should think seriously about the importance of a degree in your life-long career as a web professional.
Yes, some people will do just fine without a degree. The uber-talents. But don’t fool yourselves that you’re all Bill Gates or Steve Jobs in the waiting… most of you, and that includes me, are a part of a long tail that thrashes away at the crumbs. Often this discussion gets hijacked by looking at the exceptions; but for every Steve Jobs there are tens-of-thousands of ordinary everyday ‘not Steve Jobs’.
Understand that the World is changing and the World Wide Web is only around 6000 days old. Globally we have a growing cashed-up middle class who can afford better education – the numbers of Chinese and Indian students in western universities reflects that story. Expectation of minimum bars for education in society are rising. The web professional from China and India are multilingual and have as many as four or five languages at their fingertips.
You can read Eric’s comments for the whole of everything soup that makes up the importance of getting yourself a formal education. I just wanted to point out the big picture stuff and the flaw of the argument that says you might not need it.
The flaw is that the contrary argument is based on an idea the world isn’t changing, that the World Wide Web won’t change. That new technologies won’t arrive that push aside HTML and CSS or the 30 year old Internet protocols we’ve all come to love and loathe at various levels of 3am angst. Worse. That the Internet will remain US / EU oriented. That’s a myth you can’t afford to buy into if you’re looking at a total career strategy.
Instead of looking backward for validation that you don’t need any qualifications… something that may well apply today… look forward and honestly tell yourself in the mirror if you think it’s always going to be that way. Seriously. Because I think in 10 – 15 years you’re going to look back at the tiny prickly little Internet of today and laugh and laugh that you considered it immense and complex. We won’t even get into the landscape of depleting and rare resources or pollution or the fragility of the model a future web might evolve through because of legislation, global politics or changing social norms.
And as you get older you realise that every generation after you is a little smarter and more talented and better at what you do… their job is to usurp your experience and talent with their own next wave of creativity. Don’t for a second think that your portfolio, bar the few uber-talents in the room, are going to fend off the natural selection of the fittest for your entire web professional career. Oh my God, you may honestly believe it’s so.
All I can tell you is that the future will be unlike what we expect right now. End of story. Failing to be prepared for that future… not having formal qualifications down the track… is going to affect your prospects and promotion opportunities along the way. But it’s your ride. It’s your ride.
